A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard


Compare Poets

Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.

Poet A

Douglas Malloch Douglas Malloch

Poet B

John Masefield John Masefield
Compare two related contemporaries

A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.

Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 69% Poems 82% Blended 75%
Swap sides Another related pair
Douglas Malloch

Douglas Malloch

5 May 1877 – 2 July 1938 (~61)
2 live poems · English

Douglas Malloch was born on 5 May 1877 in Muskegon, Michigan, a city whose identity had been built in large measure from timber, water, sawmills, ships, and the difficult labor of turning northern forests into the materials of American expansion. He died on 2 July 1938, leaving behind a body of verse that was once widely circulated in newspapers, trade journals, recitation books, schoolrooms, and inspirational anthol…

“The difference between a stepping-stone and a stumbling block is how high you raise your foot.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Children's Verse, Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Peace, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities
John Masefield

John Masefield

1 June 1878 – 12 May 1967 (~89)
8 live poems · English

John Edward Masefield was born on 1 June 1878 in Ledbury, Herefordshire, a market town on the borderlands of England and Wales, and died on 12 May 1967 at Abingdon, then in Berkshire. During his long life he became one of Britain’s most recognizable poets: a writer of sailors, fields, foxhunts, village sinners, mythic heroes, children’s dreams, national ceremonies, and private grief. He was also a novelist, playwrigh…

“Man is immortal till his work is done.”

Neighbourhood: Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Georgian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Douglas Malloch
John Masefield
1877 1967
They overlapped for 61 years (1878–1938). When John Masefield was born, Douglas Malloch was about 1. John Masefield was about 60 when Douglas Malloch died.
Douglas Malloch in history John Masefield in history Years they were given

On the map

About 6,001 km separate Muskegon, Michigan, USA from Ledbury, Herefordshire, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Douglas Malloch

John Masefield

Open both on the History Atlas

Themes they return to

Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.

Shared

life star

Douglas Malloch only

scrub highway grass heart wood understands forest stranger

John Masefield only

world death wind dead ships home memory weather tide fever maritime ship

From the biographies

Douglas Malloch: muskegon, lumbermen's poet, be the best of whatever you are, the passing of the pine, great lakes region, american lumberman, progressive era, regional poet. John Masefield: ledbury, herefordshire, hms conway, salt-water ballads, sea fever, the everlasting mercy, constance de la cherois crommelin, the tragedy of pompey the great.

Poems that secretly rhyme

The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.

Who Understands
Douglas Malloch
72%
Compare
Twilight
John Masefield
Be the Best of Whatever You Are
Douglas Malloch
72% life
Compare
Sea-Fever
John Masefield
Be the Best of Whatever You Are
Douglas Malloch
71% life, star
Compare
Prayer
John Masefield
Be the Best of Whatever You Are
Douglas Malloch
71%
Compare
When Bony Death
John Masefield
Be the Best of Whatever You Are
Douglas Malloch
70% life
Compare
Cargoes
John Masefield
Be the Best of Whatever You Are
Douglas Malloch
70% life, star
Compare
Twilight
John Masefield

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1879 Edison Demonstrates the Carbon-Filament Incandescent Lamp
1882 Nietzsche Declares 'God is Dead'
1882 Robert Koch Discovers the Tuberculosis Bacillus
1883 Emil Christian Hansen Isolates a Pure Yeast Culture at Carlsberg
1883 Friedrich Nietzsche Publishes 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'
1883 Publication of 'Treasure Island'
1884 Oxford English Dictionary Begins Publication
1884 Publication of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'

Douglas Malloch

1895 Education at the University of Michigan
1916 Publication of 'The Lumberjack's Poet'
1920 Move to Chicago
1922 Publication of 'Songs of the Lumberjacks'
1925 Involvement with the Michigan Poetry Society
1930 Publication of 'The Best of Whatever You Are'
1935 Recognition as the 'Lumbermen's Poet'
1936 Final Years in Muskegon

John Masefield

1891 Seafaring Career Begins
1902 First Published Work: 'Salt-Water Ballads'
1903 Marriage to Constance Masefield
1911 Breakthrough with 'The Everlasting Mercy'
1913 Publication of 'Dauber'
1930 Appointment as Poet Laureate
1961 Death of Constance Masefield
1967 Final Publication: 'The Complete Poems'

Emotional landscapes

Douglas Malloch: Tenderness, Peace, Spirituality. John Masefield: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder.

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